Pearl Maiden

H. RIDER HAGGARD

PEARL MAIDEN

Москва, 2018

УДК 82 ББК 84

H.Rider Haggard

Pearl Maiden / H. R. Haggard. – М. : T8RUGRAM / Original,

2018. – 480 с.

ISBN 978-5-521-06614-8

Haggard’s faith-fortifying novel is a delicious blend of stirring events, captivating characters, and historical detail. The story is about the destruction of Jerusalem, about first-century life as they follow the hardships and trials of Miriam, a young believer; and Marcus, the Roman officer who wishes to marry her.

УДК 82 ББК 84 BIC FC

BISAC FIC000000

CONTENTS

Chapter I. THE PRISON AT CÆSAREA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Chapter II. THE VOICE OF A GOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Chapter III. THE GRAIN STORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Chapter IV. THE BIRTH OF MIRIAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Chapter V. MIRIAM IS ENTHRONED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Chapter VI. CALEB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Chapter VII. MARCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Chapter VIII. MARCUS AND CALEB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 Chapter IX. THE JUSTICE OF FLORUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124 Chapter X. BENONI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 Chapter XI. THE ESSENES LOSE THEIR QUEEN . . . . . . . .156

Chapter XII. THE RING, THE NECKLACE

AND THE LETTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166

Chapter XIII. WOE, WOE TO JERUSALEM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184

Chapter XIV. THE ESSENES FIND THEIR

QUEEN AGAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203

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CHAPTER I

THE PRISON AT CÆSAREA

It was but two hours after midnight, yet many were wakeful in Cæsarea on the Syrian coast. Herod Agrippa, King of all Palestine – by grace of the Romans – now at the very apex of his power, celebrated a festival in honour of the Emperor Claudius, to which had flocked all the mightiest in the land and tens of thousands of the people. The city was full of them, their camps were set upon the sea-beach and for miles around; there was no room at the inns or in the private houses, where guests slept upon the roofs, the couches, the floors, and in the gardens. The great town hummed like a hive of bees disturbed after sunset, and though the louder sounds of revelling had died away, parties of feasters, many of them still crowned with fading roses, passed along the streets shouting and singing to their lodgings. As they went, they discussed – those of them who were sufficiently sober – the incidents of that day’s games in the great circus, and offered or accepted odds upon the more exciting events of the morrow.

The captives in the prison that was set upon a little hill, a frowning building of brown stone, divided into courts and surrounded by a high wall and a ditch, could hear the workmen at their labours in the amphitheatre below. These sounds interested them, since many of those who listened were doomed

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to take a leading part in the spectacle of this new day. In the outer court, for instance, were a hundred men called malefactors, for the most part Jews convicted of various political offences. These were to fight against twice their number of savage Arabs of the desert taken in a frontier raid, people whom to-day we should know as Bedouins, mounted and armed with swords and lances, but wearing no mail. The malefactor Jews, by way of compensation, were to be protected with heavy armour and ample shields. Their combat was to last for twenty minutes by the sand-glass, when, unless they had shown cowardice, those who were left alive of either party were to receive their freedom. Indeed, by a kindly decree the King Agrippa, a man who did not seek unnecessary bloodshed, contrary to custom, even the wounded were to be spared, that is, if any would undertake the care of them. Under these circumstances, since life is sweet, all had determined to fight their best.

In another division of the great hall was collected a very different company. There were not more than fifty or sixty of these, so the wide arches of the surrounding cloisters gave them sufficient shelter and even privacy. With the exception of eight or ten men, all of them old, or well on in middle age, since the younger and more vigorous males had been carefully drafted to serve as gladiators, this little band was made of women and a few children. They belonged to the new sect called Christians, the followers of one Jesus, who, according to report, was crucified as a troublesome person by the governor, Pontius Pilate, a Roman official, who in due course had been banished to Gaul, where he was said to have committed suicide. In his day Pilate was unpopular in Judæa, for he had

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taken the treasures of the Temple at Jerusalem to build waterworks, causing a tumult in which many were killed. Now he was almost forgotten, but very strangely, the fame of this crucified demagogue, Jesus, seemed to grow, since there were many who made a kind of god of him, preaching doctrines in his name that were contrary to the law and offensive to every sect of the Jews.

Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Levites, priests, all called out against them. All besought Agrippa that he would be rid of them, these apostates who profaned the land and proclaimed in the ears of a nation awaiting its Messiah, that Heaven-born King who should break the Roman yoke and make Jerusalem the capital of the world, that this Messiah had come already in the guise of an itinerant preacher, and perished with other malefactors by the death of shame.

Wearied with their importunities, the King listened. Like the cultivated Romans with whom he associated, Agrippa had no real religion. At Jerusalem he embellished the Temple and made offerings to Jehovah; at Berytus he embellished the temple and made offerings there to Jupiter. He was all things to all men and to himself – nothing but a voluptuous time-server. As for these Christians, he never troubled himself about them. Why should he? They were few and insignificant, no single man of rank or wealth was to be found among them. To persecute them was easy, and – it pleased the Jews. Therefore he persecuted them. One James, a disciple of the crucified man called Christ, who had wandered about the country with him, he seized and beheaded at Jerusalem. Another, called Peter, a powerful preacher, he threw into prison, and of their follow-

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ers he slew many. A few of these were given over to be stoned by the Jews, but the pick of the men were forced to fight as gladiators at Berytus and elsewhere. The women, if young and beautiful, were sold as slaves, but if matrons or aged, they were cast to the wild beasts in the circus.

Such was the fate, indeed, that was reserved for these poor victims in the prison on this very day of the opening of our history. After the gladiators had fought and the other games had been celebrated, sixty Christians, it was announced, old and useless men, married woman and young children whom nobody would buy, were to be turned down in the great amphitheatre. Then thirty fierce lions, with other savage beasts, made ravenous by hunger and mad with the smell of blood, were to be let loose among them. Even in this act of justice, however, Agrippa suffered it to be seen that he was gentlehearted, since of his kindness he had decreed that any whom the lions refused to eat were to be given clothes, a small sum of money, and released to settle their differences with the Jews as they might please.

Such was the state of public feeling and morals in the Roman world of that day, that this spectacle of the feeding of starved beasts with live women and children, whose crime was that they worshipped a crucified man and would offer sacrifice to no other god, either in the Temple or elsewhere, was much looked forward to by the population of Cæsarea. Indeed, great sums of money were ventured upon the event, by means of what to-day would be called sweepstakes, under the regulations of which he who drew the ticket marked with the exact number of those whom the lions left alive, would take the first

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